


36,66 light-years away

by destinesiv, xLittleScorpion



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22569205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinesiv/pseuds/destinesiv, https://archiveofourown.org/users/xLittleScorpion/pseuds/xLittleScorpion
Summary: Alex let herself get distracted for a second, thinking if any of it was ever gonna change, if she was ever gonna get the answers she's been pursuing all this time, if she was ever going to stop ending lives to find what she was looking for.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	1. Prologue

Maggie Sawyer shut off her computer and started gathering her things to go home. 

That week was a living hell. Maggie loved her job even in the toughest days but those last seven days had been unbearable; going from a hostage situation that took her almost 24 hours of negotiation to a kid murdered in a case of domestic violence. She loved her job, but some days she hated it.

Since the beginning of her career, Maggie found comfort in knowing that she was always helping someone, saving people's lives and making a positive change in the world, or at least she hoped so. She often thought of that when she had to walk into a crime scene and watch as forensics covered bodies with white sheets. Sometimes, they were innocent kids killed by the people who were supposed to take care of them. Sometimes, it was a woman who had put too much trust in her partner, and sometimes it was a man who left his house for work and was shot before he could get there. Those days were the ones where she, somehow, felt the most responsible. Even when she knew there was nothing she could've done to stop it, she was the one who was supposed to keep them safe. 

To some extent, those cases were always stuck in the back of her head. 

Those days were hard, but the good ones were the ones that made her love what she did. Days when she managed to save people or help them in any way she could. Sometimes helping not even as a police officer but off duty. Those were the days she liked the most because she felt useful and proud to be able to lend a hand to someone in need. 

Sadly, the past week had been full of cases of the worst kind and that last night had been the worst. She didn’t even want to think about it, all she wanted was to drink her coffee and get some rest in the peace of her apartment.

So after that endless shift at the precinct, the bell to the door of Maggie's favorite cafe chimed as she walked in. The place was quite full to be so early in the morning. She recognized some of the people there, some of them were her colleagues and some others, regular clients. Maggie made her way to the counter to place her order, glad that at least the line was moving fast.

"A Black coffee, with a sesame seed bagel, dry double toasted, please."

Tapping her fingers against the counter, Maggie glanced at her phone only to notice she had a new text message. She opened it, rolling her eyes at the sight of a spam text, and deleted it right before noticing her order was ready.

After putting her phone away and getting her breakfast, Maggie had turned around to leave when someone bumped into her, making her drop the coffee to the ground and spilling the other woman’s drink all over her neck, hair, and shirt. 

"What the fuck, are you blind?" It had been a bad idea to leave her windbreaker in the car. 

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry!”. The woman was standing in front of her, eyes wide open as she looked everywhere for something to help her with. Maggie was still looking at herself, all wet from the drink as the woman found the napkins was looking for. “Here”. She looked anxiously guilty, and it made Maggie feel bad about her reaction for a second. She was already tired from work and having her drink spilled all over her wasn’t the way she intended to end her worknight. Maggie took the napkins she was offering without saying a word, and started cleaning her clothes, giving up after a few seconds when she knew it wasn’t going to do anything. Her shirt was probably ruined. _Sigh_. She really liked that shirt.

“Um, did you order black coffee?”. Confused, Maggie looked back to the barista who wasn’t paying attention to them and then back to the woman. 

“Um, yes?” 

“That cup you dropped on the floor? That’s iced tea with a shot of espresso. Your black coffee is all over your shirt now. They switched up our orders.” _Oh._

“Great. That’s great.” Well, black coffee was going to be a lot harder to get out of her clothes. Things kept getting better.

“I’m sorry again, I can buy you another drink” The woman half asked.

"It’s fine. I need to go home and change.” Shaking her head, Maggie attempted to dry her shirt once more before throwing the napkins in the garbage. Then, she left the place and the woman behind, without her breakfast and with her favorite shirt ruined.


	2. Chapter 2

_11:34 pm: Got a new address._

Alex stared at the text, groaning as she got up from the bed. She thought she would have enough time for her wounds to heal before the next address arrived. It hadn’t even been a week since the last one and usually, it took months to gather information about who they were, where they lived and when and where it was safe for her to interrogate them.

Careful not to pull the stitches, she put on her work clothes; hoodie, jeans, beanie and boots, all black. The phone lighted up again with a new message, now with the time and place she needed to head to. She was glad the address her source sent wasn’t downtown like the last one, because having to break-in an apartment in the center of National City meant having to worry about witnesses, and she didn’t have the energy to care about that kind of stuff. She didn’t have the energy to go to that house either, but she knew that waiting wasn’t a possibility, so she left her apartment walking as best as she could despite her injuries, trying not to limp, and hopped on her bike.

It was a dark, old, poorly maintained house in the west of National City. Windows, that appeared to be black with all the dust and dirt clinging from them, obscured the view inside. Alex stared at her phone screen, her eyes tired as she double-checked that it was the right address. 

She had taken the long road there to clear her head a little to make sure she was ready for her next move. Her bike carefully placed in the shadows had been left at the side of the house, out of sight of anyone that could pass through there. 

All the lights in the house were off except for the dim light from the main entrance that illuminated the front. Approaching the door silently, she made sure there was no one around the neighborhood before pulling out her black gloves and lockpicks to break in. 

Once Alex was in, she walked through the long hall to the only room that had the lights on. The door was closed, the light creeping under it. The low sound of the tv with the sports channel sounded muffled, but apart from that, the house was fairly silent.

She slowly turned the knob on the door and pushed it open, both hands now on the gun. Her target didn't seem to notice her presence, being too absorbed on the game.

As she was crossing the room towards him, the wood on the floor creaked, breaking the silence.

Alex swallowed, preparing herself for the next move. Lifting her gun quickly as the alien turned around, she pointed the gun at his head. 

As she did that, he stood up, fear and shock were written all over his face as he drew into the conclusion that his life could end in any second.

Before he could say anything, Alex growled, "Sit back down.” punctuating every word.

“Wh-What do you want? I don’t have any money, I swear.” He stuttered, sitting back down as he tried to calm his rising nerves.

“I’m not here for the money, I need information about Roulette’s whereabouts.” At gunpoint, the alien's face shifted from confusion and nerves to surprise in one second. Yes, she knew about all that and how he took part in it. He could try to mask his expression all he wanted but she was sure he knew exactly what she was talking about and playing dumb would only serve him to seriously piss her off.

“I don’t know who that is.” A lie. Alex was used to it by then because that's how every interrogation always started. And she wished this one didn’t end like the others. 

“I think you do. Four years ago, there were these underground fight rings organized by Roulette, aka Veronica Sinclair. You were in those fights. You and your friends were her goons” Alex explained lazily making gestures with her hands and gun, pacing in front of him

"You're crazy. I don't know anything about that." They never did. 

Alex stopped in front of the alien, staring him down. "So you're saying that, if I point at you with this incredible UV flashlight I have in my pocket, there won't be a tattoo with a snake inside a circle in your right wrist?" Alex circled him slowly taking the flashlight out of her side pocket. Blacklight tattoos were made with dyes that were only visible under ultraviolet light. It was one of the only things she got from one of her victims, it wasn't much but it surely was more effective than just saying she had a list of names.

"No, I-" Alex grabbed his right wrist, forcefully pressing her thumb tightly over the texture of the invisible tattoo.

"Now." A smirk. "Do tell me." She pointed back at him with the gun she never got to really use. "What do you know about Roulette and her “business”?" 

The alien swallowed clearly intimidated by her, hesitating until he finally spoke bitterly. “I’m not saying anything to you.” 

\--------

Another name she crossed off her list.

Unfortunately for Alex, they were useless, and the result had always been the same. She didn't particularly enjoy to kill them, not even a little bit, but the brainwashed bastards never gave in, never betrayed Roulette, never gave her even a hint.

She could barely remember the time she was an advocate for alien's rights, and every time she had to interrogate someone (and get rid of them later) the only thing that made it easier was the thought of them being the bad guys. Deep down, she knew it wasn't enough reason to kill and D.E.O. Agent Alex Danvers would always say that they deserved a fair trial and sentence, but this Alex Danvers seemed like a completely different person after four years. 

She tried not to give it much thought since her reasons were more than enough for her. She was going to do anything to get what she needed, even if that meant losing herself and everyone she loved in the process. 

After making sure that he was indeed dead, Alex started to open the doors of the kitchen cabinets until she found what she was looking for.

She'd been doing this for years but the mix of feelings she felt then -the tingling sensation and the anxiety of getting out of there, creeping up her body- never changed. 

The house was then completely silent and the only thing her ears perceived beside her breath was the pronounced thump of her heart.

Luckily for her this time, it had been easy to finish up things when she saw they weren’t going to go anywhere. His species didn't belong to the strongest type of alien unlike the last one that had left her with bruised ribs and cuts all along her abdomen and arms.

She let herself get distracted for a second, thinking if any of it was ever gonna change. If she was ever gonna get the answers she's been pursuing all this time, if she was ever going to stop ending lives to find what she was looking for.

It was becoming harder to stay calm and patient, waiting for the day that new info came in, waiting for something to go different and change the monotony that her life had become. 

She was barely getting any sleep and, when she did, she ended up waking up with her body and clothes all wet, full of sweat from nights filled with nightmares of dead bodies and every other possibility her mind could come up with where she didn't make it in time and it was too late. 

It was so exhausting to get up every day to feel how her body was always hurt, full of wounds from the aliens that were stronger, better than her.

When she was too wired to sleep and her brain wouldn’t shut up, she would train hard until her body screamed at her to stop. It was nearly impossible not to spend nights going over everything she had done, to wonder if she x would’ve ever gotten anything if she did things differently, if she could've said something to make them change their minds or do something to break them and force them to finally spill _anything_ that could be useful.

The loud screeching of a car's brakes outside jolted her back to the present. The sound got quieter and quieter until it was barely audible, giving her time to slow down her heart rate.

Taking the cap off the bottle of bleach, Alex started pouring it all over his corpse and around everywhere she stepped on. She bleached it all, cleaning the places she hadn't even breathed in, checking for hairs that could've fallen, checking for blood, or any other thing that could be linked back to her. 

Once Alex was satisfied with the results, she leaned up against the wall, near the door, staring at the ceiling, hands opening and closing into fists. Her eyes flicked guiltily back down to the body on the floor. It was a life, after all.

Pushing her feelings aside, she left thinking of how long it would take this time to find a new target.

\--------

There were exactly three people that early in the morning at the station when Maggie's shift started. She usually liked it that way. After 8 am the bullpen was always full of people and it wasn't the easiest environment to work in, but after eleven years in the force, she got used to it. She walked past the first pair of desks towards hers, where a pile of files was waiting, exactly the way she had left them the night before when her shift ended. _Sigh_. It had been long since the last time they had gotten a case like this one. A case that was taking years to resolve where every second that passed with the killer on the loose meant another alien could be killed.

The remorseful thoughts of not being able to stop the killings, especially because she was the officer in charge, were still on her mind when her partner threw another file on her desk, almost dropping the stack of files that were already there.

"Watch out, McConnell."

"Sorry. Another murder last night. The alien was found dead inside his house." That was the seventh victim. The killer was good at both killing and covering their tracks. The NCPD had not had any suspects since the case began. Not even one solid clue and it was getting on Maggie's nerves. They only knew it was a trained person because no civilian would be able to pull this up without leaving anything behind for them to work with. "From what I've been told, they snapped his neck, like they did to the other victims. I'm pretty sure you know this already but, of course, they used gloves and didn't use any weapons so there isn't anything ballistics can use to work on. We should head there Sawyer, maybe we can find something this time."

The crime scene was not close to the station. It took them half an hour to get there, which meant half an hour of McConnell talking about his night and some show she never watched. But she liked that better than talking about her night since she didn't have anything to tell besides the fact that she spent almost the entire time searching for anything that could help them get closer to the killer, some clue to stop feeling like it was dead-end.

There were already two patrols outside, two cops investigating the exterior of the house and another two talking to who appeared to be a neighbor. 

Everything seemed normal, it was an old house and it looked like the owner didn't take good care of it at all. There was nothing out of the ordinary at first sight. They walked towards the kitchen where they knew they were going to find the body. They encountered exactly what they expected: a body lying on the floor, now covered by a white sheet, and nothing else. No blood, nothing broken, no signs of defense from the victim. 

At first glance, the house looked just like any other, only interrupted by a dead body on the floor. She pulled the sheet away from his face, but couldn't identify what species he belonged to, mostly because he looked exactly like a human, so she was going to have to start with that. Either way, she didn’t think it would matter that much, all the victims were from different species. 

Maggie looked away from his face and glanced at his wrist. She knew what she was looking for, so she kneeled beside the body and slowly placed her hand on the mark that was always was there, barely visible. 

"You brought the UV lantern, right?" She asked McConnell without looking away from the alien's wrist. He handed her the small item they carried to every crime scene since the first murder. She turned it on and pointed it at the mark. As soon as the light lit the wrist, a tattoo became visible. A circle with a snake inside, of less than two inches. "It's the exact same tattoo like the other ones. Nothing seems different." She heard her partner let out a sigh of frustration. “But there’s this one thing… one thing that breaks the pattern.” McConnell already knew what she was going to say, because he had been thinking about it too, but he stayed silent and let her continue because he knew her enough to know she was talking more to herself than to him. “Between one murder and the other there was a distinctive long gap, but the last one happened one week ago, what changed?” She got up and turned around to face him.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re getting desperate? We still don’t know what they’re looking for.” “Before this one, if they had months to plan how they were going to murder these aliens. Maybe now that they have less time to prepare they’ll get sloppy.” And there it was, a glimmer of hope after four years of nothing.

Maggie moved away from the body as the CSI team got into the room, but she already knew they were not going to find anything else. The sixth previous crime scenes had been the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading 💜 Let us know what you think in the comments!


	3. Chapter 3

****Alex was a trained agent who had spent years learning how to investigate a case to see things no one else could, learning how to get away with murder if she needed to. Alex had been investigating and killing aliens after useless interrogations for years. She knew the police's hands were empty.

Never used a gun, and after every murder, she was careful to clean everything and leave the scene exactly the way she had found it. No fingerprints, no hair, no footprints and nothing to investigate. 

Or at least that’s what she thought. 

The police were investigating the case, it wasn't a surprise given the fact that she had left seven dead bodies behind. She had made sure they didn’t have anything to build a case with, so when she turned the tv on, it was unexpected to hear the Lieutenant of the NCPD announcing there was a break on the case that could potentially lead to the killer.

It was probably a trick. They were trying to make the killer nervous so she would get sloppy, and maybe that way they’d had a chance to catch her. 

However, Alex couldn’t be completely sure about that, she was obsessed with control and wanted to know exactly what they knew and where they were in the investigation. Her source had tried to talk her out of it and she knew they were right, getting close was a stupid move, but she was Alex Danvers and Alex Danvers was stubborn and hard-headed. If they had any clue she didn't know about, she would divert the course of the investigation from the inside. 

So she turned on her computer while pouring herself a glass of scotch to start her research. One that wouldn’t take long since she knew exactly what she was looking for. 

After the first killing, she wasn't near as calm as now. She remembered how, like minutes ago, she had turned the tv on at her small apartment and watched as a tiny brown-haired cop on the news, who the reporter introduced as the officer in charge of the case, was surrounded by the media. Alex didn't remember what the Detective had said, after all, it had been almost four years, but what she did recall was how relieved she felt after the officer said they didn't have any clues yet. 

Alex quickly found that video on youtube and the name came up in the first seconds. Maggie Sawyer, NCPD Science Division.

\-------

Alex arched her back and stretched, listening as her shoulder bones cracked. Staying up all night watching videos, reading interviews and stalking the detective while sitting on a very uncomfortable chair had been a terrible idea. The tiredness was catching up with her body in the absence of caffeine and her body was protesting in pain. It didn’t hurt as much as it did the nights before, and even if it was enough to make anyone want to stay in bed all day, she wasn’t the kind of person who would stay in just because it hurt to get up so she put on her regular clothes and headed to the NCPD. 

It was early in the morning, she got there way before the shift change, and she didn’t saw her come in, so she assumed Sawyer worked in the night shift. The day passed by, a lot of officers were getting in and out from the precinct with no signs of the one she was interested in. She waited patiently, just like she had done a lot of times before, back then when she was a D.E.O officer. Although being used to it didn’t make it any less boring.

After hours that felt like days, she saw Detective Sawyer leave the building. Alex didn't know why, but when she was searching for information about Maggie Sawyer she assumed she was going to be the owner of some of the nice looking cars that often were going around National City. 

She was surprised to find out that she rode a black Triumph Bonneville T100. Alex had always loved motorcycles and was the proud owner of a Ducati. She took care of it like it was her child, and Sawyer seemed to do the same because hers looked as good as new. 

As soon as Sawyer drove past her, Alex took her bike and started following her, keeping her distance to avoid raising any suspicions. From then on, Alex’s daily routine changed.

After a lot more research that took several days, Alex ended up knowing her whole itinerary, which consisted of training at a local gym, going to bars, work, train some more and getting coffee every morning at a fancy shop near the precinct. Sawyer wasn’t the only cop that went there every morning to get breakfast, and Alex saw many of them go in and out at different hours of the day to get their coffee which made her wonder how bad the coffee at the station must be. She remembered the coffee she religiously had every day when her shifts started at the DEO. They weren’t the best, neither was as good as the drinks she always bought at her favorite coffee shop -the ones she discovered one of the many times Kara forced her to go shopping with her- but they were bearable. 

Alex also discovered how good of a Detective Maggie Sawyer was. She read every article posted online about every case Sawyer had ever worked on, and she had to admit, it was impressive. As far as Alex knew, the investigation about the alien killings, the ones she had been trying to make impossible for the NCPD to solve, was the only case she was stuck on.

There was this interview from CATCO that took place after the second murder, written to keep the public calm when they still didn’t know if the killer was targeting just aliens or if humans were on the list too. The interview was featured in the CATCO magazine and although she couldn’t hear Sawyer’s voice, she understood why it worked and helped people ease their nerves. The way she talked reflected the time she had spent preparing for this interview, and the effort she put on learning every word of the speech made specifically to relax whoever read it. 

For a reason she didn’t quite understand yet -maybe it was the fact she had been watching and investigating her for weeks- Alex knew that without the need of a speech, Sawyer could be as good. She could always find the right thing to say in any given situation and that was probably the reason why her superiors sent her to that interview, and why she was always the one in charge of hostage negotiations.

After almost ten days of watching Sawyer’s day to day life, she came to the not-so-surprising conclusion that she didn’t do anything besides work, get drinks, train and sleep. Occasionally, she'd come back home accompanied but never with the same woman twice.

Sawyer spent a lot more time working than she did sleeping. Alex could relate to that, and every night as she rode home after the Detective got to her apartment, it made her think of her times as an agent, even if she didn’t want to bring back all of those memories. She didn’t get much sleep now either, but for different reasons. In any way, Sawyer having a regular schedule and a similar routine to hers made it easier for Alex to keep track of her objective. 

It looked like a pretty boring life, but Alex was not the one to judge since everything she had been doing for the past four years was wait until her source gave her an address to go torture some random alien that never gave her what she needed. 

\----------------

On the eleventh day, she decided to put her plan into action. It wasn’t a particularly complex one but she needed to get it right. She changed from her regular all-black outfit and put on her best jeans and one of the few leather jackets that didn’t have blood stains over it because she had been too lazy to wash them.

Exactly at 6:42, as Alex expected, Maggie Sawyer walked into the store. She looked tired, and Alex knew the reason was that she had been working all night. Alex was also tired since she had spent the entire night watching her movements from one of her regular spots where she was sure Sawyer could never see her, even if she got out of the precinct.

Alex ordered the most disgusting drink she could find on the menu, it wasn’t on her plans to drink it but she had to find something that was the exact opposite of what Detective Sawyer was ordering if she wanted to get her attention.

Alex paid and thanked the woman once her order was ready and stepped back next to Sawyer, waiting. Once she was sure she wasn’t going to be seen, Alex pulled out her phone and dialed a number she knew from memory by now. 

Alex didn’t consider herself the best hacker, she was far away from hacking the Pentagon, but it only took her five minutes to hack into the NCPD’s database and find Sawyer’s number. 

She had also kept the phone she used for work years ago but modified it to be impossible to track. So when Sawyer’s phone got a random spam text sent to distract her from her order, Alex’s number couldn’t be seen.

Sawyer spent barely ten seconds looking at her phone, but it was enough for Alex to switch the drinks without being noticed before stepping away from the detective to where she couldn’t be seen. 

Her voice pulled Alex out of her thoughts. 

“I want this to go, thank you.”

And exactly when she thought her plan was working perfectly, she had to improvise. The whole point of switching the drinks was to start a conversation as soon as Sawyer tried the coffee and realized it wasn’t what she ordered, but she couldn’t do that if she left and that happened at her house. So Alex loosened the cap of the coffee, walked towards Sawyer, bumped into her and spilled the coffee into the woman, getting some of the drops on her own jacket. Alex watched as the coffee quickly spread over Sawyer’s clothes and hair.

“What the fuck, are you blind?”

_Bingo._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Let us know what you think in the comments 💜


End file.
